I wasn’t sure where to post this, but I’m really annoyed by getting copyright infringement claims from some ai company which apparently acts on behalf of Unity. I made a small extension for Chrome and Firefox called Unity GUID Resolver which is completely open source and has no purchases or anything. It is just a useful tool, which I wanted to share with others to make their lives easier. I chose to have Unity in the name, since it is only really useful together with the export script to map guids to their names.
Now apparently the crawlers from tracer.ai found this and claimed copyright infringement and forced chrome to take it down (and now the same for the microsoft store):
Comments: Dear Friends at Microsoft Edge, We respectfully request you make a further review of the subject app because it uses Unity’s trademarked name in the title for an app created for the purpose of relating to Unity . Such use is obvious as the title contains “Unity GUID Resolver". This is a clear violation of Unity’s . Registration information is here: UNITY (4978183) (US) : 4978183 : [US] Thank you, J. Woodward Director of Enforcement Tracer, on behalf of Unity, Inc. 401 W. Front St. Suite 500-B Boise, Idaho 83702 US (872) 240-2777 unity@tracer.ai Any personal data collected by Tracer and used to identify individuals for the purpose of this communication have been done in accordance with applicable privacy laws and the Tracer Privacy Policy available at: Privacy Policy - Tracer AI. Certain information provided herein may be confidential and/or protected from disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient of this transmission, please notify the sender immediately and do not deliver, distribute or copy this transmission, disclose its contents, or take any other action in reliance upon or as a result of the information it contains.
I mean wtf, I can see that this might be an infringement, but I don’t really see the benefit for Unity to take down tools that might help fellow developers. I don’t have the motivation to interact with that ai thingy in any way, so I guess the extension soon will be gone from the stores, because some entity acted on behalf of unity to destroy a useful resource for them.
Sorry, for the rant, this is just quite frustrating. If anyone at Unity is reading this: Is this really what you want from that company?
“Unity GUID Resolver” implies that it’s under the Unity brand, so that’s a pretty cut-and-dry trademark (not copyright) issue. I don’t know how the AI works and I’m not a Lawyer either, but I think changing the name to “GUID Resolver for Unity” should nominally resolve the conflict.
BTW why is this a browser plugin? That doesn’t make sense to me.
Just FYI companies (there are a couple) like Tracer.ai usually don’t have a communication to the IP owner after something suspicious is found.
They are just hired to uphold the trademark, meaning they will just shoot at what’s suspicious and isn’t clearly published by the IP holders…
So likely no Unity employee explicitly said to take down your product.
Btw. unfortunately open source is not a defense because the quirky laws e.g. in the US can result in loosing the enforcements rights over your IP if you allow others to use it without licence. Whether they monetize it or not does not matter.
Thanks, went ahead and made the change you suggested and also changed the logo to not have the unity logo in there. I really wasn’t sure if I want to invest the time to comply with this or just let the extension disappear because I am really fed up with that claim.
Yep it is a browser plugin that works with a lookup that is first exported from a unity project. It is quite useful for me for Pull Requests, where I can more easily see what the referenced assets are about (resolve guids to their asset names). For a quick demo have a look here:
Yeah, seems very much to be the case. I still wanted to articulate that this is shit also for Unity, since they are potentially killing off useful tools for their ecosystem. Might help them make a decision to not use tracer.ai in the future
Behind ’Tracer’ is ’Focus IP, Inc.’, a company providing products and services related to brand protection. You’re not getting copyright infringement claims “from some ai company”, you’re getting copyright infringement claims from a company who’s protecting other people’s IP.
Do they use AI? Yes.
Does it really matter? No, because you still (inadvertently) infringed Unity’s trademark.
i got hit with the same warning (for my custom launcher, since it has “Unity*” word on it).
But got reply from support, that adding clear disclaimer is enough:
The message below appears to have been sent by our Brand Protection Service provider in error. I will make sure to reach out to them to ask that they retract their letter. If the customer has any trouble accessing their project as a result of this letter please let us know asap and we will address the matter with Github.
We confirm that the disclaimer that currently appears on their page is sufficient and will make sure to safelist them on our end so that they don’t receive another letter of this type in the future.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.
Ah nice, good to hear that support does help with those matters. For me, I was too annoyed by the legal shinanigans, but I should have dealt with it right away -.-
These are US trademarks according to the trademark page (not WIPO or EUTM), so as a EU company I’d say, make me Matthew. (being hyperbolic here.)
Also, according to Unity’s own trademark and style guidelines you are allowed to use the word and logo in certain cases, and it seems yours is a permitted usage.
You may use Unity Wordmarks to describe or to refer to Unity products or services in connection with your products or services to explain that connection, provided that the explanation is true and accurate. (For example, you may indicate that your product is “compatible with Unity software” or that your service is to provide “tutorials for Unity software”.)
If you want to be extra safe:
You may use Unity Wordmarks in published materials, digital and otherwise, provided that your use is consistent with all of the following and otherwise complies with these Guidelines:
using the Unity Wordmarks is actually relevant to the subject matter of the materials;
the Unity Wordmarks do not figure more prominently in the materials than your Trademarks, including Trademarks of your products and services; and
you provide a proper Trademark Notice and Attribution Statement as described below.
Also, why is Weta still a Unity trademark? Isn’t the ownership and subsequent trademark owned by Peter Jackson since 2023?
This is just another one of these parasitic companies abusing the legal system to send out scary dubious claims that won’t even hold up in court. Shame on Unity to not keep an eye on who represents them and how.
The way I see it, on one hand it’s normal for a company to defend its trademark, on the other, this feels like a severe case of a company thinking, “Why do we even need employees? AI can do the same work, and humans don’t offer anything AI can’t. Let’s fire some people, replace them with AI, and see what happens.”
To me, this looks more like an automated outcome from Tracer.ai than the result of poor human judgment.
Inevitably, until companies realize that AI is not a miracle solution and cannot truly replace people, we’ll keep seeing these kinds of problems across the software industry.
Oh well great… Now I did what they asked for and they still managed to get my extension off of the Edge Add Ons Store
How it looked before I got another request:
What I got after a few days after not taking it down, but mailing enftracer.ai and letting them know that I changed the name and logo multiple months ago.
I went ahead and did the whole submission process again, now everything is back up. Some colleagues asked me where the extension went and I decided to ditch my anger and pride and just do it again. If you’re getting value out of this please leave a review on the extension so others can find it as well (since it is now a completely new extension again without any reviews).
